Category Archives: NAB

Livestream has revealed their biggest, boldest, broadcasting tool update in their 7 year history. The Livestream website has a new look and experience, and so does their iPhone app. At NAB 2014, Livestream had demonstrations of Livestream for Glass, Livestream Studio Control Surface, Livestream Studio HD510, Livestream Studio HD1710, and Livestream Studio.

Livestream for Glass enables Glass users to produce hands-free, live streaming video, from their Google Glass. It is the first broadcasting video app for Glass. First, you need to install Livestream for Glass. Next, pair it with a Livestream event. To open the app, say “Ok Glass, Livestream.” Tap the side of your device and you are live!

Livestream Studio Control Surface is a modular control surface with 5 assignable tracks. It has a T-Bar and audio mixer and a USB connection to Livestream Studio. Tactile controls give you quick access to critical functions, including full motorized audio mixing and assignable triggers for current and future Studio features. Studio Surface is compatible with any hardware or software edition of Studio.

Livestream Studio HD510 is the ultimate portable live production switcher. It has a built in touch-screen display and unique form factor. The HD510 gives you flexibility and performance on the go. It can be carried on a plane using the provided carry bag.

Livestream Studio HD1710 is a supercharged rack-mount switcher with bundled control surface. It is designed for control rooms, production trucks, venues and studios where rack mountable form factor is a must.

Livestream Studio has had an upgrade. The free version is now available with multi-camera support and audio mixing. Studio Version 2.0 was previewed at NAB 2014. The full release will become available in May of 2014.

Telestream, the leading provider of video transcoding and workflow solutions demonstrated its full line of enterprise-class Vantage file-based software solutions at NAB 2014. Some of the highlights included Post Producer, Traffic Manager, and Vantage Cloud.

Transcoding is at the core of the Vantage video processing platform. Telestream showcased its complete family of best-in-class Vantage video transcoding products for multiplatform distribution, including broadcast, cable, VOD, IPTV, multiscreen and OTT.

Post Producer is a new content production and assembly product that automates repetitive production processes that can tie up editors. Based on user-supplied templates, Post Producer automatically assembles a segment or spot, compositing video, graphics, titles, and captions or subtitles and applies audio processing as required. It also accelerates the versioning process which allows more jobs to be completed and billed. New features include support for popular NLE timelines, composition input from Sony Creative Media Services, and Canoe DAI (dynamic ad insertion) asset creation.

Traffic Manager is a complete end-to-end solution for managing the movement of commercials and syndicated content – from ingestion to transmission. It offers broadcast and cable companies a central point of ingest for material received from commercial delivery services, FTP, tape, and USB devices. A Web portal allows regional and local advertisers to upload their assets. Traffic Manager offers all departments a centralized view of the assets. Its rules-based workflow automation reduces costs by reducing the chance of human error and by ensuring legal compliance.

Vantage Cloud is a new product that complements on-premise Vantage systems. It allows users to quickly and easily spin up and tear down transcode farms in the cloud. It offers all the capabilities of Vantage, including automated transcoding, media processing, automated decision-making, and third party integrations – on cloud based infrastructure. It has a global reach and offers pay-as-you-go pricing at Amazon Web Services.

Soloshot is the leader in personal robotic cameraman devices. At NAB 2014, they announced their SOLOSHOT2 Camera Controller accessory. It is a robotic arm that can control your camera and track you from a distance. In other words, it lets you take some really awesome “selfies” in photo or video format.

The SOLOSHOT2 Camera Controller accessory has an automated pan/tilt/zoom platform. It lets you take 4K action content of yourself, by yourself, from up to 2,000 feet away without the aid of an assistant cameraman. To do this, the SOLOSHOT2 tracks the user who is wearing a lightweight, waterproof and shockproof transmitter.

You can pair the SOLOSHOT2 Camera Controller accessory with cameras like the new SONY AX-100 camcorder and their VG line of interchangeable lens camcorders. It can also be used with some other types of camcorders, DSLR’s and smartphones. It is possible to link together a network of multiple SOLOSHOT2 Camera Controller accessories and transmitters to create an entire robotic production crew.

Sennheiser unveiled its new MK 8, large-diaphragm, condenser studio microphone at NAB 2014. The new microphone features five selectable polar patterns. They are: omni-directional, wide cardioid, cardioid, super-cardioid, and figure-of-eight. The MK 8 also has a low cut/roll-off filter and selectable pad.

The MK 8 was designed and manufactured in Germany. It echos the sleek design of the MK 4 studio microphone. The fixed cardioid MK 4 was designed for plug-and-play simplicity. The multi-pattern MK 8 offers additional control for the refined recording engineer.

The new microphone has a one-inch, dual-diaphragm capsule, precisely spattered with 24-carat gold and elastically mounted to reduce structure-borne noise. It also has a three-position filter that allows the user to either eliminate low-frequency noise below 60 Hz (-18 dB/octave, low-cut position) or introduce a softer roll-off effect from 100 Hz down to compensate for the proximity effect in close miking (-6 dB/octave, roll-off position).

The MK 8 is encased in a sturdy metal housing. This gives it relatively low sensitivity to humidity, as the impedance conversion is done within the capsule. It is packaged with a microphone clip and protective pouch. Optional accessories include an elastic suspension, a foam windshield, a pop filter, and a hard case. The new MK 8 microphone will be available in late summer of 2014.

Rabbit TV is the world’s largest virtual library of digital media. They have organized a world of content in order to give people access to over 50 years of popular entertainment from thousands of online services. Rabbit TV is the product of a collaboration between FreeCast and Telebrands.

They announced something exciting at NAB 2014. Rabbit TV will be launching a brand new original programming network that is focused on niche content for highly targeted audiences. They were at NAB negotiating with top web production companies that would benefit from the massive audience and unique monetization models that Rabbit TV offers.

The basic idea behind the new type of network is one that has been “recycled” from the cable industry’s model. As we all know, cable has been putting together shows that focus on a similar topic into one channel for a while now. Food Network is one example – all of the shows on it are about cooking and food.

Rabbit TV is expanding its global content offering to create an unprecedented “One World Media Platform” for over 150 countries. They were seeking international content at NAB 2014. Rabbit TV has a new 100% revenue Content Partnership Program that includes ad-supported, pay-per-view, and premium channel partnerships. They are the first to strike content deals at NAB.

Optical Cables by Corning offers the first all-optical fiber cables for the Thunderbolt community. They are available in lengths spanning up to 60 meters. The cables enable broadcasters and A/V professionals to connect computers and peripherals at speeds up to 10 Gb/s through Thunderbolt technology and up to 20 Gb/s through Thunderbolt 2. Optical Cables by Corning are 50 percent smaller, 80 percent lighter, and stronger than comparable copper cables.

At NAB 2014, Optical Cables by Corning announced a new rebate program with LaCie and Magma. With the purchase of a Thunderbolt enabled device from LaCie or Magma and a Thunderbolt Optical Cable by Corning, users can save up to $150.00.

EditShare is a leader in shared media storage and end-to-end tapeless workflow solutions for the post-production, TV, and film industries. They have announced their participation in the NewTek Developer Network. NewTek, as you may know, is the provider of the TriCaster multi-camera live video production solution and the 3Play slow-motion instant replay servers.

The new EditShare-NewTek workflow features EditShare shared storage (Xstream, Energy and Field 2). It also features Flow media asset management and Ark backup/archiving. All of this is integrated with NewTek live production systems.

EditShare shared storage provides industry-leading throughput and stream counts. A 16-drive EditShare shared storage system can sustain over 700 MB/second in any combination of reading or writing (when working in uncompressed HD or 2K).

Optional SSD and 15,000-RPM SAS drive configurations are available for even greater performance. This provides more than enough bandwidth to accommodate the live event captures from NewTek direct to EditShare central storage, while a number of NLE workstations simultaneously edit the material.

Teradek has announced that they now have three new transmitters for their Bolt Pro line of wireless video products. They featured the Bolt Pro 300, the Bolt Pro 600, and the Bolt Pro 2000 at NAB 2014.

The Teradek Bolt is a latency-free wireless transmission system that sends 4:2:2, 1080p60 video at up to 300ft or 2000ft. Both the Bolt and Bolt Pro transmitters are housed in a milled aluminum chassis with multiple 1/4” mounting holes. The receiver is enclosed in a durable ABS plastic shell. The transmitter requires 4W of power, while the receiver consumes only 6W.

The Bolt Pro 300 is short range. The Bolt Pro 600 is middle range, and the Bolt Pro 2000 is long range. All three can transmit uncompressed 10bit RGB video at less than 1ms of latency. They now all come with both an HDMI and 3G-SDI input on the TX. Each system is multicast capable up to 4 fan-less receivers. This allows you to send your feed to multiple destinations at the same time.

The Bolt Pro 600 and the Bolt Pro 2000 each have the new receiver with GRAB engine. It offers both 3G-SDI and USB 3.0 outputs. This enables you to ingest Bolt’s uncompressed 10bit RGB video feed directly into a DIT Cart, NLE computer, or live production switcher with no added delay.

The GRAB engine supports the USB3.0 Video Class. That means your Bolt Pro receiver with GRAB engine appears like a built-in video source to your software and will work in any Windows or Mac applications that support video.

The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) featured solutions for high-efficiency real-time video encoding and decoding at NAB 2014. They also showcased their Hybrid 3D camera and ASP.

The Fraunhofer HHI Full HD 60Hz HEVC real-time software encoder provides a significant bitrate reduction for full HD video input at 60 Hz. They demonstrated the entire encoding chain at NAB. The real-time input comes over SDI from an ARRI Alexa camera and also from file play out together with audio. The HEVC encoded video output, packaged as a MPEG-2 transport stream, is fed over IP to the Fraunhofer HHI player system (which decodes it).

The Fraunhofer HHI 4K 60Hz HEVC real-time decoder offers real-time decoding of video content at resolutions up to 4K 10bit at 60Hz. A demonstration of it was also presented at NAB. The player takes the MPEG-2 transport stream input over different interfaces. Those interfaces include: Fast/Gigabit Ethernet (UDP/TCP/multicast), DVB-ASI, or from a file. Audio and video output is over HDMI 2.0 on an 84” 4K TV.

The Hybrid 3D is a cost-effective 3D production with trifocal camera material. It features the first After Effects plug-ins for generation of stereo content from trifocal film material. Fraunhofer HHI’s trifocal camera system enables stereo material to be produced just like a classic 2D production. It eliminates the need for special 3D camera expertise. The After Effects plug-in streamlines the post-production process.